UP government is planning to set up more trauma care centres in the districts with the highest casualty rates in road mishap cases.

The state government is planning to set up more trauma care centres in the districts with the highest casualty rates in road mishap cases as many of these deaths take place due to lack of timely medical attention.

The department of health has already sought details of all such districts from the traffic department.

“The department has decided to open more trauma care centres/primary health centres on the national highways or in the districts where more accidents take place,” said an official.

“The department will shortly forward a proposal to the Centre seeking funds to set up more trauma care centres especially in districts where the rate of accidents was very high,” he added.

He said the government had also decided to speed up work on the under-construction trauma care centres in Gorakhpur, Faizabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jalaun, Jhansi, Bareilly, Agra, Etawah, Fatehpur, Allahabad, Meerut, Mathura and Lalitpur districts.

He said the proposal also came up for discussion at the high-level state road safety council meeting presided over by transport minister, Durga Prasad Yadav, here on Thursday.

The list that the traffic department has forwarded to the health department shows that more accidents took place in districts connected to the national highways.

“I was surprised to see that Firozabad, otherwise a small district, was next only to Kanpur Nagar in the number of deaths from accidents in 2012,” additional director general, Traffic, AKD Dwivedi told the Hindustan Times.

He said the list of all such districts had been forwarded to the health department.

“We have ranked the districts on the basis of deaths and not on the number of road accidents,” he added.

Thus, Kanpur Nagar with 504 deaths in 1257 accidents in 2012 is on top of the list followed by Firozabad and Lucknow where 531 and 525 persons died, respectively, the same year.

Meerut, Mathura, Agra, Allahabad, Ghaziabad, Bulandshahar and Gautam Buddhnagar are next on the list.

Dwivedi said he had written to the police chiefs of these districts, asking them to enforce road safety rules more strictly.

Shravasti district had the least number of reported deaths —41 in 32 road accidents.